Chapter 21

"I think I should," said Fellowes, laughing.

"And if the creature died, leaving no issue, would you continue to call it so?"

"Yes."

"But if you found that he was the head of a race, as man was, and a whole nation of such monsters springing from him, then would you say that this wonderful intrusion into the sphere of our experience was no miracle, but that it was merely according to law?"

"I should."

"Verily, my dear friend, I am afraid the world will laugh at us for making such fantastical distinctions. This infraction of 'established sequences' ceases to be miraculous, if the wonder is perpetuated and sufficiently multiplied! Meantime, what becomes of the prodigy during the time in which it is uncertain whether any thing will come of it or not? You will say, I suppose, (the interpolation in the 'series' of phenomena being just what I have supposed,) that it is uncertain whether it is to be regarded as miraculous or not, till we know whether it is to be repealed or not."

"I think I must, if I adhere to the principle I am now defending."

"Very well; only in the mean time you are in the ludicrous position of facing a phenomenon of which you do not know whether you will call it a miracle or not,--the contingency, meantime, on which it is to be decided, not at all, as I contend, affecting the matter; since you allow that it is the infraction of the previously established order of sequences, as known to uniform experience, which constitutes a miracle! If so, I must maintain that the creation of man was, for the same reasons, of the essence of a miracle. You seem to think there is no objection to the admission of miracles, provided they are astounding and numerous enough; or provided they are a long time about, instead of being instantaneously wrought. I must remind you, that to the principle of our argument these things are quite immaterial. Whether the revolution by which the established order of sequences is absolutely infringed,--the face of the universe or of our globe transformed, or an entirely new race (as, for example, man) originated,--I say, whether such change be produced slowly or quickly is of no consequence in the world to our argument. It is whether or not a series of phenomena be produced as absolutely transcending the sphere of all experience, as those events we admit to be impossible, called 'miracles.' That the introduction of man upon the earth for the first time (for you will not allow his race eternal), or the origination of a sun, is not at all to be reckoned as transcending that experience, I cannot understand. Nor can I understand it a bit better by your saying that it, is in conformity with the vague something you are pleased to call a law. It is a safe phrase, however; for as neither you nor any one else can interpret it, no one can refute you. This law is a most convenient thing! It repeals, it appears to me, all other laws,--even those of logic. Perhaps would be better to say that miracles are no miracles when they are 'lawful' miracles. No! let us keep our principle intact from all such dangerous admissions as these. In that way only are we safe."

"Safe do you call it? I see not how, if we carry out this principle in the way and to the extent you propose, we can reply to the atheist or to the pantheist, who tells us that the universe is but an eternal evolution of phenomena in one infinite series, or in an eternal recurrence of finite cycles."

"And what is that to you or me? How can we help our principle (if we are to hold it at all) leading to some such conclusion? We are, I presume, anxious to know the truth. You see that Strauss, who is the most strenuous assertor of the impossibility of miracles, is also a pantheist. I know not whether you may not become one yourself."

"Never," said Fellowes, vehemently; "never, I trust, shall I yield to that 'desolating pantheism' (as worthy Mr. Newman calls it) which is now so rife."

"I think Mr. Newman's principles ought to guide you thither. You seem to hold fast by his skirts at present; but I very much doubt whether you have yet reached the termination of your career. You have, you must admit, made advances quite as extraordinary before.

"We shall see.--But I suppose you have reached the end of the objections which your wayward scepticism suggests against a conclusion which we both admit; or have you any more?"

"O, plenty; and amongst the rest, I am afraid we must admit--whether we admit or not your expedient of law--a miracle, or something indistinguishable from it, as involved in the creation and preservation of the first man,--since you will have a first man."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that supposing the creation of man to be no miracle, because he entered by law; or that that first fact (which would otherwise be miraculous) is not such, simply because it is the first of a series of such facts,--I should like to see whether we have not even then to deal with a miracle, or a fact as absolutely unique; and which was not connected with any series of similar facts."

"I think you would find it very hard to prove it."

"Nous verrons. I am sure we shall not disagree as to the fact that man, however he came into the world, sooner or later, by ordinary or extraordinary methods, by some lawful wedlock of nature, or by some miracle which is not 'lawful,' is endowed by nature with various faculties and susceptibilities."

"Certainly," said Fellowes, laughing; "if you demand my assent to nothing more than that, I shall easily admit your premises and deny your conclusion."

"You will also admit, I think, that the process by which man comes to the use of these faculties, and powers, and so forth, is very gradual?"

"Assuredly."

"And will you not also admit that the development and command of these is something very different from the, potentialities themselves, as my uncle here would call them?--that, for example, we have the faculty of vision; but that the art of seeing involves a slow laborious process, acquired not without the concurrent exercise of other senses: and that the apparatus for walking is perfect even in an infant; but that the art of walking is, in fact, a wonderful acquisition: further, that the command given us by these faculties, as actually exercised, is immensely greater than would be conferred by each alone. In one word, you will allow that man, when he comes to the use of his faculties, is, as has been well said, a bundle of habits, or, as Burke puts it, is a creature who, to a great extent, has the making of himself."

"I am much at my ease," said Fellowes; "I shall not dispute any of these premises either."

"And will you not also admit that, as man comes into the world now, a long time is required for this development; and that during that time he is absolutely dependent on the care of those who have already in their turn required similar care?"

"Seeing that we have had fathers and mothers,--as I suppose our grandfathers and grandmothers also had,--there can be as little doubt of this as of the preceding points," said Fellowes, rather condescendingly.

"And that many of the functions which thus task their care are necessary for our existence, and for any chance of our being able to develop into men."

"I think so, of course."

"So that, if an infant were exposed on a mountain-side or forest, you would have no doubt he would perish (unless it pleased some kind-hearted wolf to suckle him) before he could come to the use of his faculties, and develop them by exercise."

"I think," said the other, "your premises perfectly innocent; I shall not contest them."

"A little further." said Harrington, "we may go together; and then, if I mistake not, you will pause before you go one step further. This, then, is the normal condition of humanity?"

"Yes."

"Do you think the first man was like us in these respects?"

"I cannot tell."

"I dare engage you cannot,--it is a very natural answer. But he either was, I suppose, or was not. That, I think, you will grant me." He assented, though rather reluctantly.

"Pray please yourself," said Harrington; "for it is quite immaterial to me which alternative you take. If man was in our condition, then, though the 'lawful miracle' by which he was brought into the world might have made him a baby of six feet high, he would have been no more than a baby still. All that was to constitute him a man,--all those habits by which alone his existence was capable of being preserved,--and without which he must have perished immediately after his creation, in which case you and I should have been spared the necessity of all this discussion on the subject, would have to be learned; and his existence during that time--and a long time it must have been, having no teachers and aids, as we have--must have been preserved by a--miracle. If he were taught by the Creator himself, then we have the miracle in that direction. If he were not brought into the world under the same conditions of development as we are, but with habits ready made,--if, indeed, that be not a contradiction, --then we have a miracle in that direction; if he had his faculties preternaturally quickened and expanded, so as to acquire instantaneously, or possess by instinct, what we acquire by a long and slow process, and not for many years,--then we have a miracle in that direction. If you do not like these suppositions, I see but one other; and that is that; being a baby,--though, as I said, a baby six feet high,--he had an angel nurse sent down expressly to attend him, and to push or wheel him about the walls of paradise in a celestial go-cart. But then I think that in this last particular we shall hardly say that we have got rid of a miracle, though it would doubtless be a miracle of a very ludicrous kind. If you can imagine any other supposition, I shall be glad to hear it."

"I acknowledge I can form no supposition on the subject."

"Only remember that, if you could, the theory would still suppose man's actual preservation and development effected under totally different conditions from those which have formed the uniform experience of all his posterity; and so far from any subterfuge of a law stepping in, it is a single expedient provided for our first parent alone."

"I do not think we are at all in a condition to consider any such case, about which we cannot know any thing," replied Fellowes.

"Neither do I; but pardon me,--the question I asked does not depend upon any such knowledge; it is a question which is wholly independent whether of our ignorance or our knowledge. Granting, as you do, that man was created, but that it was no miracle, nor any thing analogous to one (as you say), still either he was created subject to our conditions of development and preservation, or he was not; if he was not, then I fear we have in form the miracle we wish to evade; if he was, then I fear also that there are but the three imaginable modes of obviating the difficulty which I have so liberally provided; and supposing there were a thousand. I fear still that they all involve a departure from the 'uniform course of Nature.'"

"But I do not see," replied Fellowes, "that it is absolutely necessary, supposing that the first man was thrown upon the green of paradise."

"Or in a forest, or on a moor," said Harrington, "for you know nothing of paradise."

"Well, then, in a forest, or on a moor;--I say if man were cast out there, the same helpless being which all his posterity are,--unfortified, as the lower animals are, by feathers or hair, or by instincts equal to theirs,--who can affirm that it was beyond the possibilities of his nature, that he might survive this cruel experiment? crawl, perhaps, for an indefinite period on all fours, live on berries, and at last--by very slow degrees doubtless, but still at last--emerge into---"

"The dignity of a savage," cried Harrington, "as the first step towards something better,--his Creator having beneficently created him something infinitely worse! Surely, you must be returning to a savage yourself, even to hint at such a pedigree. But I have done: till those cases of which certain philosophers have said so much have been authenticated; till you can produce an instance of a new-born babe, exposed on a mountain-side, in all the helplessness of his natal hour, and self-preserved,--nay, two of them,--for you must at least have a pair of these 'babes in the wood'; and till, moreover, it can be shown that they would have survived this experiment so as to preserve the characteristics of humanity a little better than the 'wild boy of Germany,' and were fit to be the heads of the human family,--I shall at times be strangely tempted to embrace any theory as infinitely more probable. I cannot think it was in this way that our first parents made their entree into the world. I hope not, for the credit of the Creator, as well as for the happiness of his offspring. Of the moral bearings of such a brutal theory, I say nothing; but if it can be true, all I can say is, that I am glad that you and I, my dear Fellowes, are not the immediate children but so fortunate as to be only the great-great --great-great-grandchildren of God! You have well called it a 'cruel experiment'; according to this, the first Father of all thrust forth his children into the world to be for an indefinite time worse than the beasts, who were carefully provided against miserable man's inconveniences! Certainly, I think you may alter the account of man's creation given in Genesis, to great advantage. Instead of God's saying, 'Let us create man in our image, he must be supposed to have said, 'Let us create man in the image of a BEAST: and in the image of a BEAST created he him, male and female created he them'; and very imperfect beasts they must have been, after all. This is that old savage theory which I had supposed was pretty well abandoned. If the necessity of denying miracles imposes any necessity of believing that, I fear that I shall sooner be got to believe a thousand."

"Well," said Fellowes, who seemed ashamed of this theory, but knew not how to abandon it; "I cannot believe there have been any miracles, and, what is more, I will not."

"That is perhaps the best reason you have given yet," said Harrington. "The Will is indeed your only irresistible logician. You are one degree, at all events, better off than I, for I can hardly say either that I believe, or that I do not believe, in miracles."

"And yet," continued Harrington, after a pause, "two or three other strange consequences seem to follow from that seemingly undeniable principle on which we base the conclusion that there neither has been nor can be any such thing as a miracle: in other words, a departure from the established series of sequences which, as tested by our own experience and by that of other men, we are convinced is stable. Will you see with me whether there is any fair mode of escaping from them? I should be very glad if I could do so."

"What are they?"

"Why, first, I am afraid it must be said, that we must entirely justify a man in the condition of the Eastern prince mentioned by Hume, who could not be induced to believe that there was such a thing as ice. I am afraid that he was quite in the right; and yet we know that in fact he was wrong."

"You are not, then, satisfied with Hume's own solution?"

"So far from it, that I cannot see, upon the principles on which we refuse to believe miracles, that it is even intelligible. We agree, do we not, that, from the experience we have (and, so far as we can ascertain, from every body else's) of the uniform course of events, of the established order of sequences, we are to reject any assertion of a violation of those sequences; as, for example, of a man's coming into the world in any preternatural manner, or, when he has once gone out of it, coming into it again; and that we are entitled to do this without any examination of the witnesses to any such fact, merely on the strength of the principles aforesaid?"

"I admit that we have agreed to this."

"Now was not the assertion that in a certain quarter of the world water became solid as stone, could be cut into pieces, and be put into one's pockets, contrary, in a similar manner, to all the phenomena which the said prince had witnessed, and also to the uniform experience of all about him from his earliest years?"

"It certainly was."

"He was right, then, in rejecting the fact; that is, he was right in rejecting the possibility of such an occurrence," said Harrington.

"But did we not ourselves say, with Hume, that, as we see that there is not an absolute uniformity in the phenomena of nature, but that they are varied within certain limits in different climates and countries, so it does not become us to say that a phenomenon, though somewhat variable, is a violation of the usual order of sequences?"

"We did; but we also agreed, I think, that those variations were to be within invariable limits, as tested by the whole of our experience; we did not include within those variations what is diametrically contrary (as in the present case) to all our own experience and that of every body about us. If it is to extend to such variations, what do we say but this,--that the order of nature is uniform and invariable, except where--it is the reverse? and, as it seems it sometimes is so, see what comes of the admission. A man asserts the reality of a miracle which you reject at once as simply impossible, as contrary to your experience and that of every one whose experience you can test. It will be easy for him to say, and upon Hume's evasion he will say, that it was performed, for aught you know, under conditions so totally different from those which ordinarily obtain in relation to the same order of events, that you are no adequate judge as to whether it was possible or not. He acknowledges that a miracle is a very rare occurrence; that it is performed for special ends; is strictly limited to time and place, like those phenomena the Indian prince was asked to believe; and that your experience cannot embrace it, nor is warranted in pronouncing upon it. I really fear that, if our incredulous prince is to be condemned, our principle will be ruined. I am anxious for his safe deliverance, I assure you."

"Still I cannot see that we can deny that phenomena may be manifested, in virtue of the laws of nature, totally different from those which we have ever seen or heard of."

"What! so different that the phenomena in question shall be a total departure from that order of nature of which alone we and all about us are cognizant; in fact, all but the one man, who tells us the strange thing, we being at the same time totally incapable of testing his experience?"

"Yes," said Fellowes; "I must grant it."

"I see," said Harrington, "you are bent on the destruction of our criterion. Do you not perceive that, if our experience and that of the immense majority, or of all about us, be not a sufficient criterion of the laws of nature, our argument falls to the ground? 'Your principle,' our adversaries will say, 'is a fallacious one; Nature has her laws, no doubt, which apply to miracles as to every other phenomenon; but in assuming your experience to be a sufficient criterion of these laws, you have been, not interpreting her laws, but imposing upon her your own.' If unknown powers of nature may thus reverse our experience and the experience of all those whose experience, under the given conditions, we have opportunities of testing, we ought to abstain from saying that some unknown powers may not also have wrought miracles. Let us then affirm consistently the sufficiency of our criterion; and the prince aforesaid must do the same; and it warranted him, I say, in believing that there neither was nor could be such a thing as ice."

"But this seems ridiculous," said Fellowes; "for according to this, different and opposite experiences may, in different places give different or opposite measures of the laws of nature; which nevertheless are supposed to be invariably the same, or invariably the limits certified by that experience."

"I cannot help it; upon that same experience we must believe it true that there are no miracles, and our unbelieving prince, that there could be no such thing as ice; for to him it was a miracle. If we do not reason thus, may we not be compelled to admit that our uniform experience, with its limited variations, is no rule at all, and that there are cases for which it makes no provision? and may not the advocate for miracles say that miracles are amongst them? No, let us adhere to our principle, and adhering to it, I wish to know whether the prince in question was not quite right in saying that there neither was nor could be such a thing as ice; for the assertion that there was, was contrary to all his experience and to that of every soul about him."

"I must say, that, if we look only to the principle of this uniform experience, he was right."

"But he rejected the truth."

"He certainly did."

"And he was right in rejecting the truth?"

"Certainly, upon your principle."

"Upon my principle! Do not say upon my principle, unless you mean to deny that you too embrace it; if you give up that principle, you lay yourself open at once to the retort that your position is insecure; that you have taken your experience as a sufficient criterion of the possibilities of events, when it is in fact merely a measure of such as have fallen under your own observation."

"Perhaps," said Fellowes, "I should say that the prince in question was justified at first in rejecting the fact, but that when he found other men, whose veracity he could not suspect, coming from the same regions of the world, and affirming the same phenomenon, it was his business to correct his experience, and to admit that the fact was so."

"I am surprised to hear you say so; you are again ruining our principle. Do you admit that the assertion that there was a place on earth at which water in large quantities became solid, was apparently as great a violation of all the experience of this man, as what is ordinarily called a miracle is of ours?"

"I cannot deny that it was so."

"But yet you think, that, though justified in disbelieving it at first, he would not be so when others, whose veracity and motives he had no reason to suspect, told him the same tale?"

"Yes."